Pantomime Politics

You would have thought that all last week was April Fool’s Day.

The Tories were in full swing, top hats out and dusted. A party treasurer explained if you would give him a quarter of a million pounds he would get you dinner with George Osborne (Tory wunderkind and the man who sets the coalition government’s budget) and David Cameron (the, well, Prime Minister). And if you complained enough over bandy and cigars your voice would be heard in policy making meetings. This high entertainment was followed by Pastygate. Yes, that’s right. The nation has been enthralled with pasties. We now have the Pasty Tax sitting alongside the Granny Tax. Apparently if your pasty is hot you will pay an extra 20% on your flaky delight, but if your pasty is cold no tax at all. So, if when they take the hot pasties out of the oven you are in the front of the queue, you will pay a tax on your pasty. But if you are at the back of the queue and it is cool by the time you reach the counter you will not. This is too absurd even for Comedy Central. When asked, Osborne declared he couldn’t remember the last time he ate a pasty. Well, of course he couldn’t! He probably never eats the things, hot or cold, proving he is an elite out of touch bastard! Never mind his budget gave a tax cut to the rich and made it easier to send your money off shore and thus avoid taxes, he doesn’t eat pasties, the bastard! Not to be outdone, Cameron announced he had just had a large pasty at the Liverpool station only to find that the company that sold pasties closed two years ago. A major BBC news programme was interrupted with the news flash form Downing Street that, yes, the PM misspoke and could not have had a pasty at the station, but that he did have a pasty somewhere in Liverpool. Thank God. Still, another elite out of touch bastard! But never mind, Cameron has appointed the runner-up in the 2010 I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here (who also attributes his out of body experiences to alien influences) to sort the problem, and once again to detoxify the Tory Party, with the T-shirt slogan We’re All Eating this Together. Boy, ain’t that the truth.

The PM Loving a Pasty

Just when Pastygate was running down Cameron and one of his trusty ministers frightened people into buying petrol because the union hadn’t yet called a strike. Cameron’s ministerial sidekick then advised people to store petrol in jerry cans in their garages, not realising that most people in the UK don’t own garages. Yet another elite out of touch bastard! But it’s not his fault really. The twenty-one millionaires and multi-millionaires in the cabinet who own two or three house all with garages naturally assumed the rest of us must own at least one house with a garage. But alas, people were forced to store their petrol in their kitchens, where the joke ended.

The Liberal Democratic Party, the junior member in the coalition government, has been horrified by most everything its senior partners in government said and did this April foolish week. Actually, the Lib Dems always seem horrified about something, but nonetheless continue to carry the heavy burden of government, making the tough decisions to save us all, from...? Well, from the government, which is to say from themselves. The only thing that causes the Lib Dems more horror, even more than their senior partners, is that those same partners might call an early election. They’ll pretty much do anything to avoid an early election. (If you want to meet with a Lib Dem member of government go to the very end of the hall and then down the stairs. Keep going down until you reach the bottom where you will find their offices. If they are not in their offices they are probably in front of TV cameras presenting and defending some Tory policy that screws the 99% - those elite out of touch rich bastards!) All was not lost, however. To the relief of all Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, their amazing popular Tory...I mean Lib Dem leader, has been photographed both eating a pasty and smiling at the same time.

Meanwhile the Labour Party big wigs, under the leadership of Ed Miliband (affectionately known as Ed the Younger), unable to say out loud that workers have the legal and moral right to strike given strikes are the only power they have when in conflict with their bosses, put on their party costumes and ran off to eat sausage rolls and pasties, in front of the cameras of course. While their mouths were stuffed with meat and pastry, they lost the bye bye bye-election in Bradford West to the ex-Big Brother housemate who favours red leotards and likes pretending he’s a cat. So while the Tories pinned themselves against the ropes to take a beating and their junior partners stood around horrified, the Labour Party was once again reduced to “learning lessons.” Labour has been learning lessons for a long time now. In fact Ed the Younger spent his first year as leader telling us how horrible Labour really was and how many lessons they had to learn. I had no idea the Labour Party was so utterly bad, but I do now. Thanks Ed. I got the message.

I think it’s time for another Big Speech by Ed the Younger. Ed gives Big Speeches from time to time which are defined as speeches that set out Labour Party policy, undermine the coalition government, thus saving the country, while at the same time saving his own job as leader. I think the last Big Speech was the one that told us all that we had three months to save the NHS. It really was a big speech rallying the troops. I thought there would then appear a website to sign an ePetition against the health bill, a website to help us write to our MP’s, a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and rallies and marches announced in all major cities in England and Wales (Scotland was spared the health bill). I thought, well, there would be a strategy. What I got was silence. There usually is a lot of silence after Ed’s Big Speeches. (Oh, the health bill passed.)

By the way, I’ve never eaten a pasty in my life. I must be an elite out of touch bastard!

Copyright © 2012 Dale Rominger